


Man Versus Myth

by obsessivemuch



Category: Power Rangers Dino Thunder
Genre: Episode Tag, Gen, General, Missing Scene, POV Original Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-06-17
Updated: 2004-06-17
Packaged: 2017-10-02 19:41:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/obsessivemuch/pseuds/obsessivemuch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An average student gets a closer look at the boy behind the "king of all jocks" mask and tries to reconcile what she knows with what she learns.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Man Versus Myth

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to Fanfiction.net on 06-17-04  
> Author's Note: I thought it would be interesting to get a real outsider's perspective on the change that Conner seems to be undergoing from the arrogant jerk in Day of the Dino I to the guy who actually apologizes to Kira at the end of The Missing Bone and tries to protect Ethan in Bully for Ethan. The timeline of this story is set somewhere after Leader of the Whack.

Elise Daniels was average in all the ways high school kids prized.  She was kind of pretty, but lacked the beauty and glamour of the popular elite.  She was brighter than most of her peers, but still had to work hard to achieve Bs and Cs.  She could throw a ball well enough, but she could not hit it with a two by four.  So she spent high school living a completely unremarkable existence, ignored by most of the student body.  Her greatest gift, a streak of kindness and compassion, was a gift that was discounted by her peers, and at 17, kindness was not a gift.  In fact, it was nearly a curse because she was fair game to the vultures that always seemed to find a way to take advantage of her sweet nature.

In early November, Elise’s thoughts were far from dwelling on her average life.  Ms. George was in the middle of assigning a quick research project about F. Scott Fitzgerald.  While her classmates were busy eyeing potential partners, Elise wondered what the cafeteria was serving for lunch.  A sudden shift among the students warned her that she needed to listen better.  "Yes, I’m going to assign you partners for this project, people you don’t usually spend time with.  It’ll be a good learning experience.  After all, you won’t always have the good fortune to work with people you like," her teacher said brightly.

As loud protests swirled around her desk, Elise flinched slightly.  She hated assigned partners because she always wound up with someone who wouldn’t give her the time of day.  And it always meant a lot more work between tracking them down, trying to find a time to work together, and doing all the work anyway.  She would have much rather worked alone.  She tuned back in as the teacher began reading names from her list.

"Greg Anderson and Ethan James."  Like most of the class, the pair stared at each other with dubious eyes.  Elise suppressed a giggle at the thought of the intelligent computer guy trying to communicate with the vacant quarterback.  She had once tried to tutor Greg in English, and she knew his vocabulary was limited to grunts and one-syllable words.  Somehow she couldn’t imagine a more unlikely pair unless it was . . . "Elise Daniels and Conner McKnight."

Her worst nightmare was suddenly true, and Elise felt that she should be feeling something other than numbness.  Everyone at the school knew who Conner McKnight was.  In terms of the school hierarchy, he was king, the golden boy who led their soccer team to the first national title ever and put Reefside on the map of high school athletics.  Many of the guys, even those in his exclusive clique, craved his approval, and every girl in Elise’s acquaintance had been in love with him at one time or another.  Elise had always been glad to escape his notice; she rather doubted that she could fall prey to his devastating charm, but she would like to avoid the added attention that his ridicule would bring onto her head.  She never minded fading into the background and found it was preferable to the horrific thought of becoming a target for others.  Elise closed her eyes, breathed deeply, and chanced a look at the athlete in the row next to her.

Instead of the constant cocky grin, Conner was smiling at her with genuine friendliness and open curiosity.  He started to say something, but the bell rang and he changed his mind in the mass exodus. 

Ethan threw a dark look toward Greg.  "Well, this is going to be a fun project."

When Conner laughed, Elise heard empathy at his friend’s predicament rather than agreement with the sentiment.  For some reason, his sympathy gave her a sharp sense of relief especially when Conner shoved his stuff into his bag and offered advice.  "Dude, the trick to dealing with Greg is to let him think everything is his idea even if you suggested it first."

"Really?"  Ethan had an appraising gleam in his eye as the pair started to walk toward the door.  Elise lingered, listening to the conversation with avid interest.

"Sure," Conner replied.  "I’ve got to get to Trig."

"I’ve never known you to be in a hurry to get to class.  Soccer practice, yes, math, no," Ethan remarked.  "Is this your studious side showing?"

"Definitely not.  I just don’t like the thought of leaving Kira alone with Trent.""

His cryptic admission seemed to make perfect sense to Ethan.  "Can you take these notes to her?  She was pretty insistent on getting them back right away.  Not so much for the notes, but for the song scribblings."

"What’s her latest masterpiece about?"  Conner’s voice was muffled as he put the notes into his bag with much more careful precision, Elise noted.

"The pain of betrayal, friends becoming enemies, you know, the usual."  Ethan’s tone contained a jarring note of false cheer.

"Right.  I’ll see you later in the quad?"  They slapped their arms together with one of those mysterious handshakes and parted ways, walking down the hallway in opposite directions.

Elise was nearly late to Spanish, but her mind spent the next two periods replaying the conversation between Conner and Ethan.  Unlike Conner, she knew Ethan and Kira slightly.  The computer wizard had managed to save a ten-page paper from a fried disk for her once.  And Kira hovered around the same group of outsiders as Elise.  They were friendly in a detached way, but none of the three had ever tried to take it farther.

Conner was the enigma to her.  For years, he had stared right through her and people like Ethan and Kira.  She had heard bits of conversations between Conner and his crowd, and he always sounded superior and arrogant.  They bowed to his will and his ego, and disrespect grew exponentially from there.  He was bored by school, by his friends, and even by dating.  The day he announced that there were no interesting girls at Reefside, a rash of weird behavior broke out.  The beautiful cheerleaders started reciting bad poetry and wore black, the girls of the fashion club broke out long skirts and bulky sweaters, and all the normal girls smiled flirtatiously to gain his attention.  Cassidy Cornell even did a news report trying to uncover interesting girls.  She failed in part because she skipped girls she considered freaks and geeks and in part because she asked all the wrong questions.  As far as Elise was concerned, the best part was Devin panning around behind showing half a dozen girls doing interesting things (including Kira Ford singing) while Cassidy concluded that there really were no interesting girls.  Still, his assertion did not stop Conner from taking out a cheerleader the very next week.

Soccer was the only thing he cared about, and his total apathy to anything else was one of the reasons he had risen so high in the hierarchy.  He refused to care about what others thought.  All that really mattered was his own opinion, and in his mind, he was better than the rest of the world.  Elise was used to knowing that Conner McKnight was a self-centered, manipulative jerk with no redeeming qualities.

But the Conner she had glimpsed today in English was an alien creature.  He spoke to Ethan like he was an equal – there was a sense of true respect for the computer genius.  He sounded worried when he spoke of Kira as if he cared about her well-being.  And she heard the sharp irrational hatred when he mentioned Trent’s name.  Reality had shifted, and Elise found herself wondering which Conner was the real one.  Was it the coolly arrogant teen she had always gone to school with or was it this other person who respected his friends and had other interests besides soccer?  And if the real Conner was the one from today’s English class, what would have caused such a rapid and startling change?

Elise had spent so much of the last couple of hours thinking about him that she thought he was a hallucination when he materialized at her lunch table and said her name.  Then she realized that he was actually talking to her in front of the whole quad where everyone was eating lunch.  "Oh," she said and dropped her plastic fork.

"Oops, sorry," he said, picking up the fork and handing it back.  "I didn’t mean to scare you."  Elise searched his smile for something other than the sincerity she saw.

"That’s okay, thanks for picking up my fork," she uttered, wondering how they had started the inane conversation to begin with.  "Did you want me to move?" she asked, aware that his crowd usually just expected her to move.

"What?  Nah, of course not."  Instead, he set his red backpack down on the ground carelessly and straddled the other end of the bench.  "I thought we should talk about the project for English."

"Uh, okay."  Elise was keenly aware of the volume of whispers racing through the quad as they noticed where Conner was sitting.  "It seems pretty straightforward, and it shouldn’t take long."

"Yeah, that’s what I was thinking, too.  Do you have any plans after school tomorrow?  I have something to do today, but I was hoping that we could do it then."

‘Huh?  No, I’m definitely free.  What did you have in mind?"

"Let’s meet at Hayley’s Cyberspace.  We can both do some research tonight and compare notes tomorrow.  That way we can do any other research online, and we can have smoothies to go with the research."  Conner sounded very pleased at the prospect of smoothies, a thought which made Elise giggle briefly.

"Hayley does make the best smoothies," she agreed, feeling the tension draining away.  She would have never expected him to be so gung-ho about the project, and she certainly hadn’t thought that he would seek her out.  "It shouldn’t take more than an afternoon to finish this project.  I can type it up after we’re done."

"That’s probably a good idea.  Spelling and grammar are not my strong suits."  His honest admission was a shock to her ears.  She had never heard of him admitting to a single flaw **ever**.

"I didn’t know it was take pity on nobodies week."  The syrupy voice came from a perfectly groomed cheerleader standing nearby with her flunkies.  Kristy Rothberg was the undisputed queen of the beautiful people, and the worst kept secret on campus was her obsessive desire to be Conner’s girlfriend, a coveted position that had never been filled.

Elise caught the shadow of disdain in his eyes before he looked at Kristy with complete boredom.  "What are you tripping about?" he asked even though he clearly did not care about her answer.

Her saccharine tone grated on Elise’s ears, but she was finding a perverse pleasure in watching Kristy’s desperate bid for attention.  "Well, Conner, we were wondering if you were trying to start a program or something for losers.  Kind of like the Humane Society even though they should totally be put down like dogs."  Elise gasped softly at the easy cruelty, but Conner listened with seeming obliviousness.  Ethan and Kira would have recognized the dangerous narrowing of his eyes as a warning sign, but Elise hardly knew him and Kristy had never paid that much attention.

When Conner didn’t respond, Kristy seemed to think it was encouragement and smiled at him with victorious eyes.  "Come on, Conner.  Sit with us, and we can talk about this weekend.  I’ve got this great new dress that’s the color of buttercups, and I heard about this new restaurant in Blue Bay Harbor," she coaxed, her voice coated with honey.

"No, I’ve got much more interesting company right here," Conner said flatly.

Half the girls in the crowd gasped at the rejection, but a couple of titters broke through the quiet.  Kristy glared, but whoever had giggled was safe from betrayal.  She looked back at Conner.  "Please.  Like this mouse can talk about anything that wonderful.  I doubt she knows anything about soccer."

Strengthened by Conner’s compliment but mostly sick of being a doormat, Elise ignored the slur and straightened her shoulders.  With a casual air, she surveyed the reputed class beauty.  "You know, Kristy, the color yellow has always made you look pretty sallow.  You might want to take that new dress back."

Kristy looked thunderstruck, but Conner laughed suddenly.  It wasn’t the companionable laugh he had shared with Ethan – instead it was the mean little laugh that Elise had associated with his clique.  "She’s right," he crowed with amusement.  "That dress you wore to the winter formal last year looked terrible on you.  I couldn’t figure out why because I always thought you could pull off a paper bag.  But the yellow and the lights and the red decorations . . ." he broke off in a fit of laughter.

Clearly stung by his words, Kristy reminded him, "You said I looked fantastic when you picked me up, Conner."

"Well, yeah.  I didn’t really want to spend the rest of the night listening to you cry over your dress.  Seriously, yellow is a bad color on pretty much anyone," he said bluntly.

"Have you told your new girlfriend that?" Kristy sneered.

Puzzled, Conner glanced at Elise who was bizarrely happy that she was wearing green, her best color.  "I guess since I don’t have a girlfriend, I don’t have to worry about that."

"Not her."  Kristy dismissed Elise without a second glance.  "That talentless poser who thinks she’s the next Avril Lavigne."

Elise felt the rage radiating from Conner and inched away from him slowly.  She already had an inkling of the protective streak for Kira and probably Ethan.  But he restrained himself from exploding and settled for staring at the cheerleader with a secretive smile, one that was far more maddening to Kristy than any of his insults.  "Everything you just said was wrong," he said slowly.  "Kira is not my girlfriend, and Avril doesn’t have half of Kira’s singing and songwriting talents.  She’s one of the most gifted people I’ve ever known.  Besides, she’s the one who looks fantastic in yellow unlike **you**.  She was born to wear the color.  And the only poser I see is standing right in front of me."  He shifted and faced Kristy fully, daring her to retaliate with cold eyes.

A lesser woman would have crumpled to pieces long before his defense of Kira, but Kristy had that rare mixture of a thick skin and a thick head so his attack rolled off her back.  Like a long-suffering martyr, she shook her head sadly.  "I swear, Conner, I really want to know how that nerd and wannabe brainwashed you so I could fix it."

He spoke in a measured tone, indicating that she was an idiot.  "It’s really quite simple, Kristy.  Ethan and Kira are smart, funny, and fun to be around.  We have interesting conversations that don’t revolve around the Reefside dating scene, shopping, or losers.  And they’re loyal unlike you who spends all her time cutting down her friends and enemies just because she thinks she’s better than them."  An angry rustling from the crowd proved that several of Kristy’s friends were less than happy with this newest bit of information.  "It’s nice to hang out with people who actually like each other and who care about other people.  They believe in something more important than the race for Homecoming Queen, and they have goals beyond finding the best date for prom.  They’re good people, Kristy, not that I would expect you to understand the concept."

"Nice?  Kind?  Good?  Are you listening to yourself, Conner?  You and I both know you’re better than that," Kristy said shrilly.  "All those reasons you just listed are why they’re losers."

Sick of the conversation, Conner peered at Kristy’s face closely.  "Hey, did you know that from this angle, your nose job, the one you brag so much about, looks sort of uneven?"

With a horrified gasp, Kristy clasped her hands over her nose and sprinted toward the girls’ bathroom with her contingent of followers trailing behind her.

"What put your nose in such a twist, Kristy?"  A small shriek of terror followed the question, but both Conner and Elise laughed uproariously at the innocent inquiry.  They caught sight of a blonde girl wearing a lemon tank top as she walked over to them with a puzzled expression.  "What’s her problem?"

"I think she’s a little sensitive about her nose right now.  Conner thinks her nose job is uneven."  Elise grinned at Kira, sharing the private joke.

The girl pondered the thought for a moment and smiled back at Elise.  "Whatever.""

"Was it?"  Elise looked at Conner expectantly.

"What?"  Conner’s expression was blank.

"Was her nose job uneven?"  Elise sounded amused by his moment of confusion.

"Oh, I don’t know.  I never paid attention.  I just wanted her to leave."  He changed the topic.  "Can we sit with you for lunch?"

At a loss for words, she felt painfully shy and awkward. One horrible minute passed before she managed an uncertain, "Sure?"

"Great, that’s settled." Conner retrieved his backpack and started searching for his lunch. He paused, mid-search, and glanced back at Kira. "Aren’t you going to sit, Kira? Hey, where’s Ethan?" His cocky grin was back, but Elise realized that it was tempered with affection.

On the other hand, Kira’s eyes reflected exasperated humor. "I was wondering if you were going to notice any time soon. Anyway, I’d love to have the chance to catch up with you, Elise," she said before she gave her friend a meaningful look. "Duty calls, Conner. Ethan’s gone ahead and Dr. O wants us to follow as soon as possible."

"Duty? Elise echoed with surprise.  The inflection Kira placed on the word was heavy with meaning.

"Yeah, we’re helping Dr. Oliver with a research project about the prehistoric findings of the area," Kira answered, delivering the excuse in an unnatural tone.  With a sinking feeling, Elise thought that it sounded like a well-rehearsed explanation meant to stop further questions.

"Oh, that sounds fun."  Elise’s words filled the awkward silence.

"It’s not usually," Conner said in a matter-of-fact tone.  Instead of the friendly teen who had sat at her table only a few minutes ago, she saw someone who was all business.  He held his keys up to Kira.  "I’ll drive us."

Kira rolled her eyes, but it was not an argument they had time to engage in at the moment.  "Don’t you always?" she muttered.  "Have a good lunch, Elise."

"I’ll see you tomorrow at Hayley’s, right?"  His backpack slung over his shoulder, Conner stood and waited expectantly for her answer with a small grin.

"Absolutely."  Elise smiled at the pair with genuine sweetness.  Whatever they were hiding was not her business, and they had both been very friendly.

Kira beamed back until she locked glances with someone behind Elise.  Her expression was empty of any emotion when she looked at Elise again.  Conner apparently caught the shift in Kira’s mood and gazed at the person with unrestrained anger.  Peeking over her shoulder, Elise saw Trent Fernandez skulking and returning the hatred in equal measure.

"Let’s go, Conner."  Kira seemed to recognize the warning signs of a confrontation.  "Ethan and Dr. O need us, remember?"

"I wish you guys would let me beat the crap out of him, Kira," he growled irritably.

"And you know what happens when you try that," she said cryptically and pulled on his arm.  "Come on!"

But Trent was the first to turn away, spinning on his heel and striding through the quad.  Kira was finally able to draw Conner away, and as they walked toward the school parking lot, Elise heard her name mentioned.  "I never thought I would see you sitting with Elise Daniels."

"Why not?"  His tone sounded rather defensive.

"Elise is really nice, but she’s no Kylee Styles," Kira teased with a grin and a poke as they passed out of earshot.

Elise stared after them, her mind whirling with new confusion.  Her world had tilted upside down in the space of a few hours.  Conner McKnight had smiled at her, sought her out in front of the whole school just for an English project, chosen her over the popular people, showed his complete disdain for his old crowd and defended his friends with fierce devotion.

It had been so easy to fear him based on his behavior in the past, to attribute truth to the gossip instead of looking below the surface.  She wondered if he had always been so congenial or if it was a recent development.  Had his friends really changed him that much in the space of weeks?  The person she had seen barely resembled the king of Reefside High – she had seen hints of his ruthlessness with Kristy, but it had taken him a while to lose patience with her prattle.  In fact, for a person who was known for being impatient and demanding, he had shown a surprising amount of tact when he dealt with the cheerleader.  Somehow, Elise thought that he was probably both people, the myth and the man, using the faces interchangeably. 


End file.
